humor. A few years ago, the firm issued
an April Fools’ Day press release announcing that it had purchased the Ei;el Tower
and Statue of Liberty for exclusive use
as wedding photo backdrops.

Something the company takes a littlemore seriously is professional develop-ment. Two years ago, WeddingWireestablished a Leadership DevelopmentProgram for current managers. “Manyof our managers had been promoted intothe role and were first-time managers. Weknew they needed training so they couldbe confident and successful in their newroles,” Markmann says. “Since then, theprogram has been expanded to includemanagers from every team, and we addedan Emerging Leaders Program for thosepeople who are poised to become man-agers but do not yet have direct reports.”On Glassdoor, a website whereemployees and former employeesanonymously review companies andtheir management, 74 percent ofemployee respondents recommendedworking at Wedding Wire, and turnoverat Wedding Wire is below the benchmarkfor high-growth companies of 18 to 22percent annually, the company says.Chi hoped the culture he fosteredwould grow organically. Helping thatalong, WeddingWire created a “man-ager of culture and experience” positionto be in charge of what might loosely becalled “fun and games.” New hires on thesales floor can be found pushing a beercart called “Brews From Someone New,”while the marketers toast their newbieswith wine from a welcome wagon named“Grape Minds ;ink Alike.” WeddingWire Donate is an employee day ofpublic service with 30-plus nonprofitsnationally. Bring an idea to Chi, and if it’slegal, it has a shot. “I’m generally willingto try anything,” he says with a grin.

IF TIM CHIis the soul of Wedding
Wire, Sonny Sudip Ganguly is the sell.
Ganguly leads Wedding Wire’s business-to-consumer and business-to-business
marketing strategy, customer acquisition
and community development outreach.
As chief marketing o;cer, Ganguly has
studied what brides want and where they
look for it. He even co-authored such a
study with sta; from the Harvard Business
School, where he earned his MBA and
served as president of the marketing club.

By some cosmic confluence with Chi,
cars also figure into Ganguly’s entrepreneurial DNA. After attending the Barrie
School in Silver Spring—where he was
president of his class of 19 students and
captain of four sports teams—Ganguly
enrolled as a premed student at the University of Pennsylvania. In the summer of

“We have plenty to celebrate at Five Star
Premier Residences of Chevy Chase.
Instead of buying, we each decided to
lease our beautiful apartments and pay
monthly, which freed up money to live
life to the fullest. Choosing to lease may
have been one of the best decisions we ever
made. Financial ;exibility is just one of
the many advantages that we enjoy here.”
Len - 11-year resident